WikiLeaks attacked for directing preferences to right-wing parties

Political reporter

Julian Assange's Wikileaks Party has come under fire for directing its preferences to the Shooters and Fishers Party and the white nationalist Australia First Party ahead of both major parties and the Greens in the NSW Senate race.

The chairman of Australia First, Jim Saleam, is a former neo-Nazi who was convicted in the late 1980s of organising a shotgun attack on the home of an Australian representative of the African National Congress. WikiLeaks candidates in NSW include human rights activist Kellie Tranter.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the WikiLeaks Party said its National Coucil decided the Shooters and Fishers and the Australia First party should have been below Greens, Labor and Liberal but administrative problems were to blame.

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It is understood WikiLeaks have gone into a complex preference deal with micro parties, mainly right-wing, in a bid to get a candidate into the senate.

Fairfax Media revealed in June that the Greens feared losing out in the race for the last winnable seat in NSW due to the deal being put together by political dealmaker Glenn Druery.

The Greens believe the preference deal could see the first Shooters Party senator elected.

And in WA, the WikiLeaks party preferenced the Nationals in the Senate ahead of one of their biggests supporters, Greens Senator Scott Ludlum.

The decision to preference the Nationals above Senator Ludlam has angered high-profile WikiLeaks support and former SBS newsreader Mary Kostakidis who tweeted it was a ''major error in judgement''.

In its statement, the party said that it was not aligned to any other party and had to choose preferences to get its name above the line on the ballot paper.

''In allocating preferences between 53 other parties or groups in NSW some administrative errors occurred, as has been the case with some other parties,'' it said in a statement.

''The overall decision as to preferences was a democratically made decision of the full National Council of the party. According to the National Coucil decision The Shooters & Fishers and the Australia First party should have been below Greens, Labor, Liberal.''